An exhausted rock star turns to drugs, alcohol and a lover when her greedy manager will not let her quit

"Bette Midler is an explosion of joy, a triumph...she is moving, funny, tragic. As real and varied as life itself.Cosmopolitan"A very compelling performance by Midler bolsters this musical biopic...Jon Niccum, Lawrence Journal-World"Powerful story, brilliant central performance...Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

Editor's Note

In this authentic, entertaining, and tragic film, Bette Midler plays Rose, a talented but exhausted, alcoholic rock star whose entire life is controlled by her cutthroat manager, Rudge (Alan Bates). Taking a bleak look at the downside of the music industry, THE ROSE chronicles the precipitous fall of this fictional rock & roll diva (modeled after Janis Joplin) as she nears a concert date in her home town that she hasn't been to in years. Pulled down by raging alcoholism and drug addiction, as well as her own insecurities, Rose's life begins to deteriorate to the point of complete self-destruction, all the while begging Rudge for a break in her grueling tour schedule. This raw, uncompromising, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking film includes several incredible musical performances by Midler in actual concert settings. THE ROSE is Midler's first role as an actress, and she embodies the alternately frenetic, worn-out, enraged, and sweetly insecure star with an almost inconceivable power, especially when interacting with her love, the faithfully adoring Dyer (Frederic Forrest).

In director Mark Rydell's THE ROSE, loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, Bette Midler plays a talented but troubled rock star who is caught up in the heady world of professional success and heartbreaking love affairs.

DVD Verdict 8 of 10Patterned rather broadly after the stormy, self-destructive life of 1960s icon Janis Joplin, and featuring a bravura debut performance by Bette Midler (who won the Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination), The Rose depicts the drunken, drugged-out, hell-bent-for-leather days of a burned-out rock singer who just wants somebody to love...The success or failure of The Rose rests entirely with its star. It has to, really, because there isn't much else here. Michael Cimino and Bo Goldman's screenplay is so thin and transparent it could have been printed on onionskin. There's no cohesive narrative--just a series of more or less related set pieces separated by explosive concert performances. There's no sense of time--after three viewings, I'm still not certain whether The Rose's final tour occurs in a week or over the course of several months. There's definitely no sense of history--although the story takes place at the end of the '60s, aside from a few Vietnam references there's not much to signal that the film isn't contemporary to its year of manufacture ten years later. (There is one hilariously dated scene in which Rose and Huston visit a diner dominated by urban rednecks, and are told, "We don't serve hippies." Rose's retort: "That's okay. We don't eat 'em." Not an original line, but still a classic.) Director Mark Rydell and his scriptwriters sketch out a beginning, an end, and a sudsy tsunami of soap opera in the middle, most of which appears to be there only to keep the film from simply segueing into Divine Madness!, Midler's concert film released the following year...Bette Midler is The Bomb as The Rose. Still the best dramatic showcase for her talents ever put on film. The Rose would have been improved by a tighter script and more sure-handed direction, but fans of the Divine can still revel in Miss M at the height of her powers. Not exactly a resounding recommendation, but it is what it is. - Michael Rankins

Film Freak Central 6 of 10Lenny by way of John Waters, Mark Rydell's The Rose is a film made obsolete by years of "Behind the Music"--this story of a Janis Joplin-inspired singer boozin' her way into a theatrical grave counts a lack of vitality and anything resembling surprise as chief among its faults. Bette Midler's performance scored an Oscar nomination in 1980, but it lands with a shrillness now that defeats its attempts at pathos and depth. Why we should care about a self-destructive blues siren with impulse control issues is one of those things unwisely taken for granted while by now, twenty-three years after the fact, the lessons of hedonism and the downward spirals of the performing kind are curiously tepid, delivered as they are with a bullhorn and a bad Otis the Town Drunk impersonation...Rose (Midler) is a boozy honky-tonker from Florida whose whole life is that terrible Yes song about bands on the road. Her manager, Rudge (Alan Bates), mistakes Rose's fatigue for the usual bratty unreliability, placing himself among the legion of folks who take and take from Rose, and just never give anything back, the poor dear...A few concert performances recorded live before an actual audience bristle with the sort of vitality that does the impossible by giving me an inkling of why it is that Midler has a fan following. Unfortunately, The Rose's concert scenes are sealed off from the rest of the film, the sense of the capricious and the delirious in Midler's stage persona lacking in her attempts at drama. Accordingly, the best moment of the film is more concert than drama, coming in a gay nightclub where drag queens do a mean impersonation of Rose to Rose's delight. It is a sequence shot with a rough vigour and a genuine ebullience that provides for the only moment in the piece where Rose's inevitable self-immolation seems more tragic than pathetic, as well as a glimpse into the potential of the material for fullness rather than caricature. - Walter Chaw